A Stolen Bottle

A Stolen Bottle

The wine was bitter, as always. It had been years since she had enjoyed a good glass of wine. Years. Yet she continued to drink a glass a night as per habit. How she developed this habit she couldn't remember. Just one of those things. It had also been years since she thought about how much she disliked the taste of wine. Susan thought long and hard, trying to remember that elusively delicious ruby red that always seemed to burn on the tip of her tongue when she least expected it. She recalled the sensuous slope of the bottle; the pop that had echoed through an airy room long after the cork had fallen forgotten. Yet she couldn't bring to mind anything else about that night. How she even knew it was night she was baffled. Something had happened one night long ago when she had savored the taste of a blood red wine and then- Nothing. Not a single memory.

As she sipped at the awful liquid she silently admitted that wasn't entirely true. Every now and then, during a particularly sweet wine, she would remember some little detail. Just a flash of something; a party, a stolen bottle, a four-poster bed. Once a kiss, twice a whisper, but never anything more. Only a woman she no longer was, a man she couldn't remember and a bottle of wine she couldn't forget.